Hey guys, I have been told me my Coralife T5 HO approx 100 watts for my 55gallon tank is too much light, and that i should raise it up high off the tank. I am confused because I thought 2wpg was standard. My goal is to run a low tech planted tank primarily because i don't want to run CO2. Also there is a 10,000k and an actinic blue bulbs in there now bc thats what the fixture came with. But i do plan on buying a 67k and daylight bulbs in the future. What do you all think? Please help because I am still able to return the fixture as i just received it in the mail the other day.

If it is a 48" fixture you should have 108 watts (2X54). WPG doesn't apply to T5HO. Really only works well for T8 bulbs. Typical, although it doesn't apply to a Coralife, T5HO fixtures put out up to 4 times their rated wattage due to individual reflectors and the reflectors are usually pretty high quality.

You could leave the 10000K bulb in if you wanted, although the actinic wil not do much for plants. I prefer 6700K.

You may need to raise it off the tank. I hope you at least got the legs that come with it, but you may want more. I think you would have been much better off with something other than HO, or maybe a single tube....to keep it low-tech anyway.

JR...can i keep the actinic bulb in, and will that decrease the amount of light. Or will that have any ill effect on my tank?

Or better yet, can i simply take out the one bulb? and just run one T5 HO 54watt bulb? will that be sufficient for the low tech approach?

You may get some algae growth you don't want with that bulb in there. Going down to one T5HO bulb will keep it low tech. Nothing to say you couldn't elevate it off the tank and use two bulbs, the correct ones. That would be what I did.